51. First of all, thank you for sharing this with us

It was always hard for me to make friends at school. The kids I did happen to latch on to felt like outsiders like myself, sort of the types to be perceived by the masses to be a dweeb and not part of the 'cool crowd'. Well, it was especially hard at my first school... then we shifted houses and I enrolled in a different school and it was a bit better for me there, I actually made a few friends. My attendance record was often poor, though - I'd often feign an imaginary illness just to skip a day, simply as I dreaded the mere prospect of going to school.

Then I went to high school. It did go badly but it was all my fault and I'm so ashamed for how weak I was back then. The annoying thing about this high school, it was the closest within our vicinity, and that was why I was enrolled there, but my friends from the last school - they'd all enrolled in a different school, so again I had to try and make a new set of friends. No luck. My feeling is... I had major problems adapting to high school and all the changes the school presented to me day to day. It felt so arduous just going lesson to lesson day by day. Eventually I stopped attending... and I never went back. Then I studied at home. I regret it badly. I feel like my life has been on a spiral ever since. I was diagnosed with agoraphobia, to this day I have anxiety issues, anxiety going out, anxiety being around people, it seems impossible forming connections with people, and even when I do interact and talk to people, I'm so inept and can gain no benefit or enjoyment from it, I'd prefer to spend my time alone to read or write.